“Australians – made nervous by the Bali bombings two years ago – may now feel increasingly under siege.
In such uncertain times, they could well turn again to the safe hands of Prime Minister John Howard, who has been in office since 1996.” (BBC)
Please, no. Time to email Mum and remind her I’m not moving back until he’s gone. John Howard is a bad, bad man.

I really do love Bill Bryson. In this interview, he manages to talk sensitively and intelligently about ‘new’ Australians’ relationship with Aboriginal Australians.
“Australia went from being a pink-skinned, sunburned, Britannic nation in the 1940s to, in a generation or so, one of the most ethnically diverse nations anywhere. And they did it all very successfully. There’s been hardly any downside to this change in immigration policy. Most of it has gone very smoothly. The people have been assimilated, and everyone realizes that it’s made the country a richer and more interesting place. Most people are really proud of that.
Still, you have this great, fundamental paradox: why doesn’t this extend to the Aborigines, the indigenous people? Australians are not a racist people. They really do have a sense of fair play. And Aborigines are not hated or treated with contempt. It’s more a puzzle: how do we bring them into society? No one has come up with any approaches at all. The gains have been almost entirely marginal.
…
It’s not that they’re universally marginalized, but in terms of social policy the Aborigines are without question Australia’s greatest failure. That’s hardly a contentious assertion to make. Everyone agrees. The question is, What do you do about it? They’ve tried lots of things. Nothing has worked so far.”
Australia’s inability to find ways to live up to the responsibility to provide the opportunity for equality in life expectancy, quality of life, education, etc is one of the reasons I’m no longer proud to be an Australia. (John Howard and the xenophobic, homophobic attitudes he encourages are most of the rest of the reasons). It’s a difficult issue. How do you reconcile 40,000 years of history? How do you find a lifestyle that works for people who have been dragged into the 21st century without any say?
Forget sucking up to the US and freaking out about refugees: finding the right questions to ask, and looking for the answers should be Australia’s first priority.

“Australian Prime Minister John Howard is at the centre of a growing row over using unsolicited e-mails, or spam, to promote his election campaign.
Mr Howard hired his son’s firm to send e-mails to voters in his Sydney seat of Bennelong ahead of national elections expected in the coming weeks.” (BBC)

Go Bob!
“In a lengthy speech delivered at Sydney University, Mr Hawke claimed Australia’s reputation had suffered as a result of the Government’s willingness to blindly follow US foreign policy.
It was a far cry from the days when Australia had taken a more uncomprising view of international relations, Mr Hawke said.
“It is sensible to have a relationship with the United States, but where we did not agree with the United States, we said, ‘Get stuffed’,” he said.
“Are we going to get back to that position, or are we, if we re-elect Howard, simply going to be in effect signing up to being the 52nd state of the US.” (news.com.au)

Howard rejects ‘serial liar’ tag
“It follows the weekend release by Labor of a document titled Truth Overboard in which it outlined 27 cases when Mr Howard allegedly lied or misled the Australian public.”
“He said Mr Howard had come up with a new term – core and non-core guarantees – to account for the government’s failure to honour its promises.” (Age)
“The Federal Government was warned repeatedly by intelligence analysts before the Iraq war that the conflict would harm the war on terrorism by fanning Islamic extremism and spurring terrorist recruiting.
An investigation by the Herald, which has included interviews with several serving and retired intelligence figures, has uncovered that John Howard and his senior colleagues were briefed on the dangers, verbally and in written reports.
Yet the Prime Minister told Australians on the eve of the conflict that the war would lessen the terrorist threat, contradicting his intelligence advice.
…
The sources also said the Government was told there was no operational link between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, and the Iraq war could not be seen as part of the broader global war on terrorism.” (Age)
I think I’m going to stop reading the Age and SMH because I can’t expect everyone to register to read their articles.

Gay marriage ban passes parliament (Age)
“Senator Greig said it was deeply offensive for anti-gay campaigners to argue that love and commitment between gay people was less or different to that between people of the opposite sex.
Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett came to the verge of tears as he spoke of the high rate of suicide by young gay people who were vilified by such laws.
…
Greens leader Bob Brown said the government had successfully wedged Labor on an issue that not even President George Bush could get through Congress because it breached the US constitution.”
Thank you, Liberal and Labor politicians of Australia. I love being a second-class citizen and a political pawn.
Also, a “ban on gay marriages has been given priority over new terrorism laws, sparking claims that the Howard Government is “soft on terror but hard on homosexuals”.
Asked yesterday whether this meant the Government considered gay couples more of a threat to Australia than terrorists, Prime Minister John Howard demurred.
…
Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett accused the Coalition of being “soft on terror but hard on homosexuals” and of “shelving its ‘war on terror’ propaganda legislation for its ‘war on homosexuals’ marriage bill”.” (Age)

“Our destiny: an expat’s perspective” says a lot of what I want to say about John Howard. Since I’m wicked and I’m lazy, I’m going to post the relevant bits here.
“It’s also been interesting to note that of late I’m received differently when entering countries or talking to people of other nationalities than I used to be, and that’s disappointing.”
…
One of Howard’s favourite and most upsetting tricks: “the Prime Minister of the country overrode popular opinion and the opinion of his own party and used the Constitution to force his own morale code on to the public.”
…
“John Howard would like Australians to see him as a compassionate man, yet this is a man who refuses to fight for the rights of Australians being held unlawfully by the United States military; a man who willfully ignores the doctrines and conventions of the United Nations; a man who unlawfully detains people seeking entry to this country under refuge status to flee persecution in their lands of origin.”
…
“How to win an election? Make people afraid of something and then find someone to attach the fear to so the people have someone to direct their anger at”
…
“calling anyone with enough intelligence and audacity to question the government un-Australian.”
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“Keep asking questions and you will “rip the mask” from John Howard’s and the government’s face so that they have no discourse, nowhere to hide and will have to finally be accountable for their actions.”

“United States President George W Bush wants to visit Australia to not only thank the country for its help in the war against terror, but also because he’s heard it’s a bit like Texas.” (Age)
I almost didn’t bother, because what is there to say?
This later article

John Howard is a much more ruthless and perhaps cunning politician than John Major ever was. (BBC)
“It appears that John Howard’s prot

I know it’s late in the day, but surely “[t]he then opposition leader, Kim Beazley of the Labor party lost the Federal election in November 2001 due largely to his support for strict, new measures against boat people” is a more accurate statement than “[t]he conservative Prime Minister, John Howard, won a third term in November 2001 due largely to strict, new measures against boat people”. (BBC)